Thursday, January 24, 2008

People keep talking about how stylish Billa was, and how great the cinematography was. What do you think? Slow motion shots of guns and swords falling down, and people walking around wearing dark glasses... is not style. Malaysia has spectacular locales... and showing a bleached version of it is not good cinematography. If that were the case, the Hollywood crockpot "Three Kings" is the best shot movie on earth.

Polladhavan was stylish. It had characters coming out of the slums presented stylishly. It had interesting anecdotes strung together in a stylish manner. It had a half decent but old storyline with succinct dialogues and a director who did not take anyone for granted. To me Polladhavan was more stylish than Billa.

The movie started with Dhanush staggering around after killing a few guys with a sword, and then immedietely flashes back to Dhanush being your normal wastrel donkey on small wall. Wasting his time with his friends, and having an unrequited lady love. Some of the initial sequences with Karunas were extremely funny and the line "Nee Kelein" could become part of the lingua franca... like "Enna kodumai saravanan idhu"...

The story moves normally as it narrates the regular tensions in such lower class families, the discussions between father and son... that kind of remind you of 7G Rainbow colony. What happens next is pretty much out of any other normal Thamizh movie. The hero is sucked into a gang war, even though he attempts to defuse the situation at every stage. What was stylish was how the director sells the "this could have happened... there is nothing outlandish about this" feel with the cascading events.

That, to me was the difference between the Thimuru / Palani / Sivakasi kind of movies and Polladhavan. The cinematography, the dialogues, the characterization and the screenplay seemed to get pretty well to lend a semblance of believabilityto the normal hero beats goons up story. This movie is definitely worth a watch.

Polladhavan was Dhanush's best movie of 2007. The music from Yuvan was good, with help from Yogi B. The love story, could have been avoided... but then it would have shrunk the movie by 45 minutes. Dhanush looked great in the action sequences... and surprisingly, the goons provide more pay-off moments than the hero in this movie.

9 comments:

Spot On! I loved this movie, but didn't care much for the sequences involving the girl. However I think the pivotal moment in the story happens largely due to the fact that he is 'oothifying' and doesn't pay much attention to the other 'love' of his life.

I had the exact same opinion about 'Nee Kelein'. It takes a lot in the tamil movie scene to go out and say 'Na sappa'. I hope the Ajiths and the Vijays take notice.

Did you catch the Polladhavan team on Coffee with Anu? It was good. It is available on tubetamil.com if you are interested.

Yes... "Naan Sappai" was a good line too !!! It takes a lot of courage to say that... It was nice to see an unassuming 'hero'... most heroes are so full of themselves. Guys who would normally irritate you in real life.

Yes da Sanjay.. it was GV Prakash... He did a good job... but unless he does something different like his cousin did, he will only be one among the 'also ran'.

Thamizh film music is in some kind of 'trough' now. Nothing new is happening.

Loori, how have you been? I liked the concept in Polladhavan.. how a normal guy got dragged into the ugly underground world.. I thought that it was a pretty average effort by G.V.Prakash when compared to Veyil and Kireedom. Actually Bheema BGM by Harris Jeyraj was amazing.

Loori, "Velli Thirai" is one movie in which I have some hope. I watched the malayalam original and it has all the elements that could make for a decent/good remake in tamil. Let's c what the director & Prakash raj do..........